


White

by hongmunmu



Category: Dragon Age II, Dragon Age: Origins - Awakening
Genre: Abstract, Anders-centric, Introspection, Mentions of a lot of characters, Other, Stream of Consciousness
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-09-10
Updated: 2016-09-10
Packaged: 2018-08-14 05:46:11
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 799
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8000785
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/hongmunmu/pseuds/hongmunmu
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Hand,<br/>wind.<br/>Carried.</p>
            </blockquote>





	White

You’re eighteen and you’re lying in a field of reeds, or of wheat, you don’t remember at this point. A ball of light is in your hands, and it loves you, and the air is warm and dry.

You were already a revolution, even then. You just didn’t know it yet.

Many spirits in this life have loved you, and you’ve loved them back. Healing. Justice. God.

The first time you met healing you were here, in a place like this. Not the same field exactly, but in this warm afternoon light, it’s hard to tell. You’ve walked the Fade many times to see it. This light.

Touched by fire. That’s you.

Justice sings in your ear. It loves you. You’re never alone, not like this.

Your love is duplicitious. It comes in waves. Just like you.

You went for a drink with Oghren sometime in Amaranthine, and that was good, it was happy, it was pure. Neither of you were any of those things but they say that two wrongs make a right. Not holy – someone like you or him could never be holy – but it was close enough. Blessed. Blissful.

He was still drunk on the corner of Tapster’s, begging for a friend or a listen, and you’re still crying in your bunk bed the day that Karl was taken away, the day Amelia with her cherry-red hair went for her Harrowing and never came back.

You’re twenty-six now, and you’re starving in the Darktown gutter, looking for a place to sleep. But Justice still loves you. It still carries you. You both remember Sigrun. You both remember the day she left. You both weep. It hurts the most then, because you couldn’t console each other. You resort to holding yourself, arms wrapped about your shoulders like you’re cold (which you are) and that’s a small tragedy in itself. “ I miss you, ” you both say, and neither of you can respond.

Fenris was a bit like Velanna. None of the elven righteousness, of course – no Dalish in that man, however much his tattoos resembled vallaslin. Still, more like Velanna than Merrill. She was too much of a golden bubble for that. A prickly brown-skinned someone with a face like the Wending Wood. If they as a pair ever put their hatred behind them, he thought, someday he might like to show Fenris Ferelden. He could take Varric to the Crown & Lion, and with any luck he’d fit right in. He wondered if any of these people had ever seen a talking tree. Ghosts don’t have homes, do they? A blank notebook with dirt between the pages, the book of Shartan, the Tale of the Champion. Shuffled like cards. If only he’d met Velanna now, he thought, and Fenris ten years ago in Ferelden at the Warden’s side, things could have been different. Friends.

Pure. Purifying. Burning like a sun. A brand on Karl’s forehead. A body being carried from the dorm in the middle of the night.

The world had passed through him like a gust of wind.

Ten years old. The Anderfels. A field of reeds. Ander. Anderfel. Anders.

Mother crying on the stairs. The world had been yellow then.

Red. White. A fire. A gunshot.

There can be no peace without Justice.

———A mage comedian. Thought those usually died young.

———They do.

We won’t grow old, Tabris had whispered to him one night. The cat purring by the fire. He repeated it to himself like a mantra. Sela petrae. Drakestone. We will not grow old.

He had never really been in this world, just floated through it. Disconnected at all times. Lying with a plump farm girl in the stables when he was seventeen and still had spots on his cheeks, watching the sun rise over the wheat. He didn’t remember her name, but she had been lovely. Perhaps he’d try and find her again, when all this was over. All this. He laughed. There was always something more.

Nothing remains. Nothing is permanent. You just keep going forward, and there are no loops, no returns, no jumping back. No stopping to breathe in the world around you. No stopping to look at the Kirkwall winter, or smell Oghren’s whiskey before you drank it, or coming back for the Warden-Commander’s picketed funeral.

No saying goodbye to Justice before it loves you and eats you and becomes you.

He heard the Calling, and the Chantry was his pyre. He ignited it. Hot like fire. Undying. A godly word. Forgive me, Andraste.

Maker, I thank you for this gift.

A ring of light around his head. Blue veins cracking out of his eyes, along his laugh lines, along his tear ducts. Petrichor in the late Lake Calenhad afternoon. A field of reeds.

I love you, and goodbye.


End file.
